Hello! My name is Sarah Rodrigues Brandon. I was born on the island of Barbados, but I have lived in many places including Suriname, London, and New York! My story is a bit unusual, but I would love to tell you about it.
I grew up in the island’s main port called Bridgetown, in a house on Swan Street, very near to the Nidhe Israel Synagogue. My family had been in the city for generations: in fact, I lived as a child with my brother, mother, aunt and uncles, grandmother, and even great-grandmother! However, when I was born none of us were free. We were all slaves who belonged to the Lopez family, Sephardic Jews who owned a store and silversmith shop. Like most Jews on the island, almost everyone in the Lopez family lived in Bridgetown or in Speightstown, where their relative led services. Although the great Rabbi Issac Karigal came to the island and passed away before I was born, he was a good friend of the Lopez family.
as he looked around the time I was born
When I was three, my father Abraham paid for my brother’s and my freedom. Abraham Rodrigues Brandon was a friend of the Lopez family, but he was also on his way to being the wealthiest Jew on the island. He was an important trader, but he also bought several sugar plantations. Like many members of the congregation, his family was from Iberia, but had come to Barbados via London. Our ancestors are buried in the Jewish cemetery, which is right next to the synagogue itself. When I was a girl, there were four houses in the synagogue yard: one for the Hazzan, one for the Banyadeira (bath attendant), one for the Shamash, and one for the Shochet who made our meat.
As the years passed, my father became the parnas of the Nidhe Israel congregation. After we were free, my brother Isaac Lopez Brandon and I went to Suriname to convert and become nação, Jews of the Portuguese nation, like our father. When I was about 15, I went to London to attend a Sephardic school. Many of the wealthiest Jews in Barbados like the Montefiores and Barrows also sent their children back to England to go to Jewish schools. It was there I had my portrait painted.
In England, I met my husband, and we married at Bevis Marks synagogue. He is an Ashkenazi Jew, but a very good man. Many Sephardic Jews would be ashamed to marry an Ashkenazi Jew, but I overlooked it. He is a fancy cloth merchant. After we married, we moved to New York, where my brother Isaac and mother Esther Gill joined us. My brother and father still traded with other Jewish merchants in Barbados, though.
Now I live in New York with my young children. It is cold here, but I still think about the island where I was born with green hills and mahogany trees, and the bright blue water in the bay. Today, all of my family members are free. The last to gain her freedom was my great-grandmother Deborah Lopez, whom my former master Hannah Esther Lopez “gave” to my brother and me in her will. For many Barbados was a land of great hardship as well as beauty.
Activity
Below is the will of Hannah Esther Lopez, the woman who enslaved Sarah Rodrigues Brandon and her family. Esther Gill is Sarah and Isaac’s mother. Rachel is most likely Sarah and Isaac’s sister who died young. Who does Hannah Esther Lopez leave the most possessions to? What do you make of whom she chooses to leave what?
Will-Hannah-Esther-Lopez